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Richard Chartier

Transparency (Performance)

In 2010, sound artist Richard Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History’s collection of 19th Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration. Chartier focused on the works of the German physicist Rudolf Koenig, including the Grand Tonometer (c. 1870-1875). This beautiful and precise set of 692 tuning forks expresses the frequency range 520 v.s (vibration simple)(260 hz) to 8192 v.s. (4096 hz). The pitches of the forks extend over four octaves, affording a perfect means for testing, by enumeration of the beats, the number of vibrations producing any given note. The Grand Tonometer is the only instrument of its kind in existence. During his Fellowship, Chartier individually recorded each of this unique instruments’ existing tuning forks as well as many other instruments, devices, and their tonal interactions.

Rudolph Koenig considered the Grand Tonometer and his other creations to be purely scientific instruments. His precise workmanship extended the Grand Tonometer’s range to frequencies across the field of human perception, thus allowing the listener a chance to witness the nature of sound itself. Chartier’s own compositions juxtapose soft and hushed, almost imperceptible, fragments with high and low frequencies, bursts, and static in an asymptotic process that cuts away from and deepens the nature of sound, finally achieving compositional focus in the spaces between them. Chartier was particularly drawn to the Grand Tonometer, feeling a distinct connection to Koenig’s approach to sound, and to his aim of a new, or enhanced, way of listening.

In a special live performance in the Ring Auditorium at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC on October 7, 2010, Chartier premiered the first version of a new work: Transparency. This performance was inspired in part by the Hirshhorn’s ColorForms exhibit, a collection of works by artists including James Turrell, Fred Sandback, and Olafur Eliasson, showcasing the use of abstract form to explore color’s evocative possibilities, from the purely optical to the metaphysical. Transparency is created from just some of the myriad delicate recordings made during his Fellowship of the Grand Tonometer, other large tuning forks, metal and wooden resonators, and wood organ pipes by Koenig and his contemporaries.

In late 19th-Century Paris, scientific instrument makers like Koenig were still referred to as philosophical instrument makers. It was possible for the public to visit their studios for musical/sound “séances”—gatherings in which the maker’s tools and materials would be presented for experiments and debate. Perhaps Transparency can be seen, in some ways, as a “sound séance” for a digital age.

Transparency (Performance) is intended as the first in a series of upcoming studio and installation works based on Chartier’s Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship recordings.

This is the 50th CD release by LINE and coincides with Richard Chartier’s 40th birthday.

Richard Chartier (b.1971), sound and installation artist, is considered one of the key figures in the current of reductionist electronic sound art which has been termed both “microsound” and Neo-Modernist. Chartier’s minimalist digital work explores the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, perception and the act of listening itself. Chartier’s sound works/installations have been presented in galleries and museums internationally including the 2002’s Whitney Biennial and he has performed his work live across Europe, Japan, Australia, and North America at digital art/electronic music festivals and exhibits. In 2000 he formed the recording label LINE and has since curated its continuing documentation of compositional and installation work by international sound artists/composers exploring the aesthetics of contemporary and digital minimalism. In 2010, Chartier was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship to explore the National Museum of American History’s collection of 19th-Century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration.

REVIEWS OFTransparency (Performance)

Transparency (Performance) feels like the most delicately crafted work. There’s a phenomenal sense of tension running through its entire one-hour duration, like the sonic equivalent of precariously assembling a sculpture from brittle glass – each note is perfectly placed and impeccably timed, as if a false move could send the composition into calamitous collapse.

Central to the piece is the Grand Tonometer – an instrument comprising of 692 tuning forks and spanning across four octaves. Chartier recorded the sound of each individual fork during his fellowship at the Museum of American History, and places these recordings in the company of the most subtle but appropriate accompaniments – the buzz of static, gentle drone surges and the soft hiss of atonal noise – that hang in the air like a cloud of trapped electricity.

Chartier claims that the piece explores the “nature of sound” itself, and the Grand Tonometer seems to have been an apt instrument with which to do this. The recordings have been processed and toyed with: sometimes removing the metallic strike of the fork to form gentle streams of sustain, sometimes dragging out the decay to leave beautiful tonal afterglow to dim gradually into nothing. The sharp sound of attack is sparingly used, arriving as a refreshing split-second of immediacy in amongst the phantom reverberations: a sudden interjection of “cause” in a work that seems to emphasize the ever-fading vibrations of sonic “consequence”.(ATTN:Magazine, UK)

… Rather than focus on the sparkling attack of a struck fork, Chartier zeroes in on its decay, extending it indefinitely to create fields of muted humming, proliferating colour dynamics through changes at the micro level: the subtraction or addition of tone recasting others in hypnotic ripple effects. Headphones are not so much recommended as essential.(The Wire, UK)

A master of extreme digital minimalism, Richard Chartier wields silence like a sledgehammer; in his patiently wrought compositions the weight of what’s not there is alone enough to pulverise you. His spotless CV takes in installations at innumerable prestigious galleries around the world and collaborations with the likes of William Basinski and Taylor Deupree, and a lifetime of experience informs his latest. This captivating live performance was inspired by, and deploys recordings of, the Grand Tonometer, a set of 670 tuning forks created in the 19th century by the German physicist Rudolf Konig (it’s the only instrument of its kind in existence). The pitches of the forks extend over four octaves, pushing through the limits of human perception, supposedly allowing the listener a chance to glimpse the nature of sound itself. Adding sounds sourced from other large tuning forks, metal and wooden resonators, and wood organ pipes by Koenig and his contemporaries, Chartier’s recording collapses the acoustic/digital boundary and turns hard science into engrossing art. Apparently Koenig’s original demonstrations of the Grand Tonometer were billed as séances, and Line invites us to treat Transparency as “a sound séance for the digital age”. Chartier really f*cks with your senses, his tonal arrangements coaxing an almost occult force out of geometric rigour. Fans of everything from Ryoji Ikeda to Sun Electric pay attention.(boomkat.com)

Celebrating the LINE label’s status as a separate entity and Chartier’s 2010 Smithsonian fellowship (as well as his 40th birthday), Transparency is the document of an hour long performance using the historic Grand Tonometer as it’s primary source. The result is a subtle piece that is captivating, but also demanding

… The opening, chiming notes show their underlying source rather clearly, but quickly are stretched out for long, drawn out passages via processing. Arriving early and becoming a consistent element are ultrasonic tones that hover near the inaudible end of the spectrum, but thankfully are at a moderate enough volume to keep this from becoming an endurance test.

Changes are subtle, but perceptible in the expansive resonances and reverberations, and the more frigid passages are interrupted nicely by little blurts of tonal bliss, as well as some percussive, crunchy wooden clicks. The latter sound almost like they could be accidents from the source recordings, but are too fascinating and varied for me to believe that’s actually the case.

As the piece goes on, there is a greater emphasis on the lower frequencies that counterbalances the shimmering metal tones. At some points there are even some heavy low-end swells that are almost jarring when they appear to balance out the sharper moments.

The closing minutes are almost visceral in their effect: some of the higher frequencies I could almost feel in my throat and teeth but, again, not in a painful way. The piece ends as it opened, with the obvious sounds of reverberating tuning forks chiming the piece to its completion.

The only weakness here is that I needed to dedicate my full attention to listening to the piece in its entirety. While I’d never think that Chartier’s work is something to throw on at parties in the background, normally this sort of work I’m ok to put on while reading or writing, but I noticed that lead to me actually tuning the album out. Since the piece is over an hour, that means true dedication is needed to fully enjoy Transparency, but the reward is worth it.(brainwashed.com)

Richard Chartier’s work is always distinguished by originality and imagination (his 2004 Chessmachinecollaboration with Ivan Pavlov remains one of my favourites), and Transparency (Performance) is no different in that regard. In this case the Line overseer was awarded in 2010 a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellowship with the express purpose of exploring the National Museum of American History’s collection of 19th-century acoustic apparatus for scientific demonstration. So what did Chartier choose to study? The Grand Tonometer, an apparatus consisting of 692 tuning forks that German physicist Rudolf Koenig created in the 1870s (a photographic detail of the instrument is shown on the cover of the CD package). With pitches spanning four octaves, the instrument offered irresistible appeal to someone as sound-sensitive as Chartier, and during the Fellowship period he subsequently recorded every one of the tuning forks, plus other materials (including metal and wooden resonators and wood organ pipes) and their tonal interactions.

The resultant work, Transparency, which Chartier premiered in a live performance on October 7, 2010 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, shows Koenig and Chartier to be kindred spirits despite the temporal gap separating them. The tuning fork tones thread their way seamlessly into the overall design of the piece, with the tones forming extended cross-currents that resound alongside a stream of textural details (rustlings, static, hiss, whirrs, electrical hum) and myriad sound fragments. The work opens with the bright, resonant ping of a tuning fork, followed by further strikes of varying volume and pitch, as well as other treated sounds. Truncated trumpet-like stutter and tuning fork accents appear against a soft background flutter, making the piece sound more like the onstage improvisation of an electro-acoustic trio than the work of a single individual. The tuning fork tones are given ample space to breathe and as a result we typically hear one struck and then fade away before another takes its place. Chartier scatters tiny fragments of fairy dust across the tones, until two-thirds of the way along it mutates into a rather becalmed, industrial-styled hum that’s suggestive of a machine engine or film projector quietly operating.

As the hour-long piece unfolds, it shows itself to be quintessential Chartier in its delicacy and precision. Hewing to generally restrained volume levels, it’s not quite microsound but hardly a work of extreme volume either. With the sound design constantly undergoing subtle transformation, it’s not quite minimal either, yet at the same time the sound palette always locates itself on the understated side of things. No fool he, the ever-resourceful Chartier is issuing Transparency (Performance) as the first in what is planned to be a series of works based on recordings made during the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship period.(textura.org)

… To merely attempt to ‘review’ such a piece, would be considered an odd and foolish exercise. It is impossible to assess the tones that make up the audio spectrum as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It is, however, possible to assess HOW the tones are arranged to form a coherent piece. Yet this is nor the time or the place for such an exercise. As Transparency is a study of the tones themselves and their interactions with one another, I find it fitting to simply describe what I experienced while immersed in this hour long performance.

Subtle sonar like pings set the piece off. Tones at the upper end of the audio spectrum fizz away like mechanical insects, as heartbeat pulses echo through the background. More pinging tones echo prominently though the mist, as the track nears what you might hear at a remedial therapist’s waiting room. Yet far from being an insult of sorts, I feel this reflects the mood this work can inflict upon the listener. Hypnotic notes glide across a sea of looped tones, like rubbing the rim of a wine glass while flicking the rim of another. Bass tones like giant footsteps echo out into the dark. An overall sensation of expanse is at work here, both physical and non-physical: almost as if you’re floating in space and yet at the same time you ARE space itself. Gradually the piece morphs into a meditation of itself, a seance of sorts. At no time is anything forced or rushed, and yet nothing drags or slows things down. Such senses of momentum are otherwise suspended for the duration of proceedings. At the risk of sounding contrived, I would liken it to a meditative experience, an uncompromising reflection of sound itself.

It is difficult to find words to encapsulate the material in question, apart from ……What sound is, and what sound can be. These would be the points i could use to describe this work. With this work, Richard Chartier has demonstrated quite clearly that he is for all intent and purposes a master of his craft. Best reflected upon in the dark, in silence, at high volume.(cyclicdefrost.com)

Transparency completes a decade of CD releases by once 12k subsidiary, now fully free-standing, Line, serendipitous coincidence aligning its publication with owner Richard Chartier‘s 40th birthday. It documents an hour-long performance using as primary source the Grand Tonometer, an apparatus created by German physicist Rudolf Koenig in the 1870′s consisting of 692 tuning forks with pitches spanning four octaves. It clearly held an irresistible appeal for obsessive compulsive sonologist Chartier, who subsequently recorded each tuning fork, along with other materials (including metal and wooden resonators and wood organ pipes) and their tonal interactions, before subjecting them to his customary processing probings.

Chartier’s musicianly concerns for exploring the aspect of space between sounds chime (literally!) with those of German physics of a century-and-a-half’s vintage. His opening strategy is a resonant sonar-like ‘ping,’ announcing its sonic origins up-close, before further fork strikes of varying pitch and volume follow, gradually more removed, consorting with other treated tones. A fork, once struck, is given full voice – allowed to resonate, decay and fade before another supplants it; extended into long drawn-out chimings, tiny flecks fluttering through them. The immediate resonance of a struck fork’s attack is quickly forgotten in the fascination for decay, altering it, extending it infinitely, fluidly, pouring the sustain out into pools of virtual mute micro-hum, leaving a tintinnabulating tonal residue; microsonic colours course through, slipping, shifting, from the minimal to the liminal. High-end tones make like digital insect chatter, as pings ring sonar-like up from the deep through a loop sea. Electrostatic plumes of fizzing static mist are nudged by soft drone swells. A slow dissolve occurs – into post-industrial hum, as greater low-end pressure rubs up against the silvery high-end shimmer, by turns stabilizing and destabilizing, establishing a deceptive path through the digi-detritus, then snagging steps on its tread-ways. Chartier’s choeographing of silence with sound increasingly seeks the shortest space possible between the constituents of its fabric. Gradually Transparency becomes, as much of Chartier’s work can be seen, a reflection on sound – and listening – itself. Koenig’s original Grand Tonometer shows were actually billed as séances, and Line’s invitation to us to treat Transparency as “a sound séance for the digital age” is a felicitous serving suggestion.(igloomag.com)

I must admit, that I’ve often looked at my dad’s records and felt envious; he lived through a time where albums often came with a lot of words on the back cover. I like this idea. I used to get the bus home from record fairs and pore over every detail I could glean from the artwork and packaging. So my dad’s old records —with wordy texts operating as introductions, guides and summaries—represented some lost golden age for me. (In fairness, there are any amount of very good reasons why there really shouldn’t be such texts…) I mention this, because the simple packaging for Transparency (Performance)—a printed card wallet—devotes its back cover to a mini-essay; serving as a concise introduction, and a more open guide/summary.

The work that I’ve heard previously by Richard Chartier, was often characterised by very formal electro-acoustic tones and textures; with great passages of “silence”, as well as frequencies which tested ear and speaker. Transparency (Performance) follows quite happily in that tradition. Its created, primarily, using recordings Chartier made of the Grand Tonometer: a set of six hundred and ninety-two tuning forks that comprehensively cover a four octave range. It was constructed in the late nineteenth century by Rudolph Koening as a purely scientific set of tools. With recordings of these, and other apparatus (wooden and metal resonators, organ pipes, etc), Chartier gathered the material for the live performance on this cd.

The piece is one long track, lasting over an hour; and the pace is rather glacial. In fact, listening to it, it curiously feels a lot longer than it actually is. That might be due to the hypnotic sense of careful listening it encourages. There are no flashy gestures to catch the ear, no sudden accelerations; just slow, enveloping drifts and developments. In the most simplistic terms, it might be considered electro-acoustic drone. Certainly the overwhelming majority of sounds to be heard are long tones, with the remainder being percussive—either acoustic sounds, or the same processed into clicks and noises. The tones truly range across the whole frequency spectrum, echoing the Grand Tonometer: I always worry that my stereo can never do justice to this kind of speaker workout. The most startling and visceral of Chartier’s tools, is his use of piercing, high frequencies; often on the edge of perception. These clinical threads of electricity are not so much heard as felt, tickling and tingling the ear and brain; they contrast starkly with some of the incredibly warm, singing drones that occupy the middle (and clearly audible) ground of Transparency (Performance). Underneath these unashamedly beautiful sounds, lurk the lower frequencies; again, some of these teeter on the precipice of audibility, with deep bass throbs and the shifting of tectonic plates. It’s albums like this, that make me want to invest in bigger speakers…

I confess that when I first played this, I flagged it as “difficult”; but subsequent listens showed an inviting sound-world that rewarded concentrated listening. It’s very rare that I sit for over an hour, listening intently to something. Chartier does create a rather austere, rigorous world, certainly; but the colour is still there if you listen carefully. Indeed, for all my talk of “clinical” sounds, there are a few “noisy”, rougher elements (the very start of the track, no less, has sounds akin to small trumpet blasts) and the overall sound is really quite warming. But the predominant tone remains very subtle, with sounds drifting slowly, and developing slowly – if at all. Whilst writing this, and listening to “Transparency (Performance)”, I had that most hackneyed of “drone-reviewer’s” experiences – an alarm going off outside. For a good ten minutes, the car or house alarm interacted and danced with the recording, in near perfect harmony: a reminder of how someone like Chartier can colour a space or environment, and our perception in it. From the most cold, precise and mathematical of tools, he has created a world of ghostly, ethereal mystery.(musiquemachine.com)

… Chartier has taken recordings of the device to construct this lovely work. As one might expect, the general sound-world is one of shimmers, layered tones usually without the initial strike, though that bit of percussiveness surfaces now and then, a very beautiful effect. There are other subsidiary rumbles and noises, the whole embodying a complexity not immediately apparent. There’s something almost stately about the way it proceeds; one picks up something of the ceremonial, as though witnessing a rite of some kind. I’d love to have witnessed this live but am happy enough to have this document, a unique and beautiful recording.(just outside, US)